Various communication technologies on the Internet allow users with common interest to collaborate, share files, chat with one another, multi-cast audio and video for presentations and group meetings, and engage in multi-player gaming. Currently, however, most communication on the Internet takes place in a server centric environment whereby all communication flows to or through large central servers to which individuals may connect to join and participate in such communication.
With the reemergence of peer-to-peer technology, the current server centric model of Internet communication is quickly being replaced. Indeed, peer-to-peer technologies enable users to contact one another in a serverlessz environment, free from the constraints of server based Internet communication. In a peer-to-peer based system, a users anonymity and privacy may be maintained since communication occurs directly between peers within the network. However, while individual communication and file sharing is relatively well established in peer-to-peer networks, establishing, discovering, joining, maintaining, and sharing information in a peer-to-peer environment is not well established.
Peer-to-peer communication, and in fact all types of communication, depend on the possibility of establishing valid connections between selected entities or nodes. These entities or nodes may be peers (e.g., users or machines) or groups formed within a peer-to-peer network. The connections between the nodes form the peer-to-peer graph that enables communication and information to be passed to and between the nodes. However, entities may have one or several addresses that may vary because the entities move in the network, because the topology changes, because an address lease cannot be renewed, because the group function or purpose has changed, etc. A classic architectural solution to this addressing problem is thus to assign to each entity a stable name, and to “resolve” this name to a current address when a connection is needed. This name to address translation must be very robust, and it must also allow for easy and fast updates.
To increase the likelihood that an entity's address may be found by those seeking to connect to it, many peer-to-peer protocols allow entities to publish their individual or group address(es) through various mechanisms. Some protocols also allow a client to acquire knowledge of other entities' addresses through the processing of requests from others in the network. Indeed, it is this acquisition of address knowledge that enables successful operation of these peer-to-peer networks by maintaining a robust graph. That is, the better the information about other peers and groups in the network (i.e. the more robust the graph), the greater the likelihood that a search for a particular resource or record will converge.
As with a server centric environment, the peer-to-peer graphs may be entirely open to allow Internet file searching and sharing within the graph. However, because peer-to-peer networks are formed as a graph of distributed users or peers, it is necessary that communication and data (records) be passed from one peer to another before all peers within a network may become cognizant of the shared information. Systems that provide such routing include Usenet and OSPF. However, such current systems suffer from limitations that have, to date, limited the full development of peer-to-peer technology. Additionally, peer-to-peer networks currently suffer from a lack of adequate graph management that, at times allows the graphs to “break” or become split when one of the members leaves the group. In such an instance, information from one part of the graph may no longer be passed to peer members on the other side of the partition created by the departure of one of the peers. As a further disadvantage, no adequate mechanism exists for the detection of such partition.
In addition to the function problems existing in the art, the amount of network traffic can easily overwhelm the peers participating within the cloud. Message size and structure complicates a peers ability to rapidly process messages, and results in delayed or dropped communications as the size of the cloud grows.
There exists, therefore, a need in the art for a peer-to-peer messaging protocol and data structure that addresses the above-described and other problems existing in the art.